


Perspective

by sechar



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-22
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-06-10 00:11:37
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,127
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6930040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sechar/pseuds/sechar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It always slightly surprised Natasha that it was assumed that most killers were male, particularly professional ones. Then again, that could be because most of the killers that were caught had been male.</p>
<p>~~~~~~~~~~~</p>
<p>In which Natasha finds someone with . . . potential.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Perspective

**Author's Note:**

> The idea came to me, I wrote it, and this is it. There is absolutely no plans at this stage to take this further, primarily because this wasn't planned in the first place. Still, if someone can see where they think this should go, feel free to run with it - just link this fic, yeah?

_One door, two windows, three moveable chairs, a solid table, and the contents of a fully stocked kitchen._

The thought flashed through her mind in the moment it took her to enter the room and flicker her eyes over it. Exits, equipment, and hindrances were catalogued and stayed at the back of her mind, as happened every time she entered a room.

It didn't matter that she was in Stark's tower (no matter what he was calling it nowadays, it would always be  _his_ tower) and that she was with people she trusted with her safety in the field, if not all her personal details. For her, that was practically a declaration of lifelong friendship; didn't mean she couldn't cut them loose without a backwards glance if she had to, but she was certainly a friend of theirs right now.

But she would always take note of what would help and hinder her if she had to make use of it.

Some might call it paranoia, or perhaps an overactive imagination. She called it pragmatism.  _Plan for the worst, hope for the best._ It escaped her who had said it, but it was an apt proverb nonetheless. And if she paid more attention to the beginning than the end . . . well, no one who knew her would be too surprised by that.

Her past alone meant that she would never be an optimist; at best she could aim for being a realist. (But whose reality?)

* * *

It was well-honed instinct that meant she flipped the person who was standing behind her.

It was training that meant she lessened the force with which she slammed him down when she recognised both the lack of resistance and the person.

"Clint."

"Natasha." A faint groan accompanied his words; she wasn't surprised.

"Is there any particular reason you're sneaking up on me?" There wasn't any inflection in her words, but Clint would get the message anyways.  _Don't sneak up on me, especially after a mission. I'm not sorry, you idiot._

"Wasn't sneaking." Still speaking in short sentences. Did he have other injuries that were hindering him?

"I did not hear you enter. Ergo, you were sneaking." Must still be using the vents. She had no idea why, especially when Tony was threatening every other day to start putting mouse traps in them. And then he had gotten distracted and tried to come up with a more high-tech solution then mouse traps. She'd left the room when the words 'laser grid' had come up in a serious conversation between Clint and the man. It didn't help that Clint, that goofy idiot, was trying to use  _Kim Possible_ as an example of why it was a brilliant idea.

"Wasn't sneaking. Was trying to surprise you with-" Had he lost even more intelligence during his latest mission?

"I don't like surprises."  _They tend to end with maiming at a minimum._ "Try again. What were you really doing?" Because Clint wasn't that dumb, even in his seemingly unending quest to make her more normal. (Pah. She was fine. She was an ex-Russian, ex-spy, semi-immortal acrobatic assassin. She was the only one like her, therefore she  _was_ the norm.)

Clint looked . . . hesitant. Which meant he had either done something stupid or was about to do so. Probably the first one, given that he was about to confess to her. "I may have mentioned to Lewis - you know, Foster's drone? - that you could taken on ten men at once and still win."

Natasha was not really seeing the problem. "Yes, and this is a documented fact." Documented with video on SHIELD files, in fact. "What is the  _problem_ , Barton?"

He winced. She'd switched to his last name, which was always a decent indicator of her patience. "And . . . she may have asked if you could teach her a few things?"

Natasha blanked out. ( _Snow and cold and pain and blood and 'not good enough' 'not fast enough' 'improve or die' and guns firingfiringfiring at her behind her from her a hilt in her hand the handle notched with the number of recruits she'd killed and her own blood dripping in front of her eyes as-_ )

"No." There was no room for negotiation in her voice. Hell, there was no emotion in her voice.

Natasha left the room with the pretty view of the city. Clint very carefully didn't move as she did so.

* * *

It wasn't that she was still traumatised by her past; she was as recovered as she was going to get.

But it didn't mean that she didn't have memories. And those memories were very strongly linked with a few specific situations.

Which was understandable, and it wasn't even unique in their band of outliers. Bruce got very touchy about human experimentation. Tony kept a spare repulsor on him at all times. Thor had a vendetta against llamas (she refused to ask about  _that_ particular story). Clint was an expert at picking out and talking to child abuse victims. Steve positively  _hated_ the cold (she thought that one was due to a combination of his hibernation and the circumstances of losing Bucky, maybe with some war PTSD thrown in for good measure).

They all had their . . . foibles, and they worked with or around them as needed.

She was never going to be a teacher, especially to someone young and with no prior training. Not because she was scared about reverting to the Red Room standards, but because she would not be able to get her own memories to shut up. And that was too much distraction for her.

(She gloried in eating ice cream. Sweetness, to spite her once handlers, and cold, to spite her memories.)

* * *

She met Lewis, after a few months. It wasn't that she was purposefully avoiding the other woman, but more that her skills were such that downtime was a rare experience. She certainly didn't have any issues with it; being of use was hardly a chore, and that she was helping people made it even better.

_34th floor, two doors, a couch, a recliner, large television, assorted items on the table, with key feature being the decorative shield on the wall._ (It was painted to look like the famous Captain America shield, but was made out of iron and embossed with dates. Tony swore that his father had written into his will that the damn thing had to be prominently displayed wherever he was living, but Natasha was eighty-five percent sure that was bullshit and he was mainly doing it to fuck with Steve.)

What struck her was that when Lewis entered, she did the same sweep.

Certainly, it wasn't as efficient and professional as her own - she was fairly sure that she'd missed the recliner - but it was an unusual thing to see in a civilian who had never been a soldier, wasn't noted as having significant trauma in her file (SHIELD had files on everyone, and she had no compunctions about reading up on the people who were going to be operating in the same sphere as her for a prolonged period of time), and had no formal training in defence or offence.

Lewis nodded at her, went over to the coffee machine, and proceeded to make herself a cup, adding two sugars and a dash of creamer. She didn't try to make conversation, she didn't even approach Natasha.

This seemed unusual behaviour for Lewis. The woman was meant to be outgoing and bold; Thor's stories certainly painted an image different to that of the cautious mouse creeping about in the kitchen mere metres from her. (No matter what Americans said, she refused to use their feet and miles. The metric system was far more sensible, and was applied in far more countries. End of story.)

Natasha wasn't so interested that she would stop reading her book (Shakespeare, Macbeth), but she certainly devoted more of her senses to monitoring the girl.

The first thing that properly registered was that she was quiet. Oh, there was the clinking of teaspoon and ceramic mug, and the creak of cupboards opening, but her movements and footsteps were impressively quiet. There weren't zips jingling, or the chime of earrings, or even the tinny noise from a phone.

The second thing was that she never turned her back to Natasha completely. She briefly thought that it was because she didn't trust Natasha, but the movements were too unconscious, too practiced to be about her specifically. No, this was a girl who was used to keeping an eye on everyone and everything.

These were unexpected things. These were things that did not match up with Darcy Lewis' file.

The girl left, without a single word to Natasha.

No, that was wrong. The girl left, without saying a single word to Natasha. She had spoken very eloquently with her actions.  _I am not an innocent, foolish civilian. Come talk to me if you are going to listen to me._

* * *

It always slightly surprised Natasha that it was assumed that most killers were male, particularly professional ones. Then again, that could be because most of the killers that were caught had been male.

Women, she felt, were innately more likely to be killers. Killing, after all, did not necessarily mean forcefully abducting your victim then brutally extinguishing their life. It could just as easily be done with a bottle of wine, a coy smile, and a sharp knife. Hell, it could be done with just the wine if the right ingredients were added to it.

Women tended to be underestimated. She herself was underestimated, assumed to be a pair of boobs accompanying the real killer. Fools. But it made it easier to eliminate them from the gene pool, so it was no more than a temporary annoyance.

Women tended to be exploited. Women were raped. Women were stalked, brutally beaten, systematically ground down.

Women had enough, and hit back. They gossiped, and helped each other, and quietly did away with who they had to.

And they didn't get caught.

Why would they? It was well-documented (and she  _hated_ that it was) that that woman's husband was a drinker, that he got rough when he was inebriated, and that he tended to storm off for a drive once he was done castigating his wife - verbal or physical, it seemed to be a noxious mixture of both. And if the handbrake didn't work one time and he happened to roll into the lake and the doors were locked from the inside- well. What a stupid man.  _He got what he deserved,_ the men whispered self-righteously, exchanging solemn nods as they eyed the widow. The women gave soft smiles and sugared words and the slightest too much pressure when the widow kissed their cheeks and whispered joy in their ears.

_Justice. Freedom. Karma._

She could understand these things.

(She didn't try to talk about them to her male teammates. They wouldn't get it.)

* * *

They would never get it. They hadn't been shouted at for their appearance, their mere presence drawing abuse. They had never formed contingency plans in their head when they walked anywhere alone at night, desperately gripping their keys as they frantically planned what to do if  _this_ man tried to attack her, or if there was someone in  _that_ alley.

But Lewis had. Probably regularly.

It wasn't unheard of. Particularly for someone like Lewis, who showed her assets with such skill, it wasn't a major surprise. One in three women in the United States would be sexually assaulted in their lifetime; for some it would be more, for some it would be less. It depended on race, social status, appearance, and chance.

Lewis had been dealt a poor hand, it seemed.

* * *

In the end, Natasha never ended up teaching Darcy about how to smile sweetly and slip a stiletto through the ribs angled just right to hit the heart - just getting the knife in the chest meant they were unlikely to have a long life, but the heart was undeniably the sweet spot.

But she definitely passed on to Clint a couple of brochures that had caught her eye.

And if Sarah-Rose Turner happened to become fast friends with Darcy Lewis, spurring her on to to become better at something like this- well.

It might even be news to Natasha Romanov.

* * *

(Darcy gives Sarah-Rose a work-out singlet for her birthday when they meet up. Embroidered by (non-professional) hand on to the white shirt is an outline of a smiley face in black, with red thread making up the features. The face is slightly lopsided, but the sentiment is clear.

Sarah-Rose hugs Darcy for it, a touch of a Russian accent shaping her words when she speaks.

Darcy doesn't say anything back, just gives a stout nod.

It is enough.)

**Author's Note:**

> For those wondering, Natasha doesn't teach Darcy explicitly both due to her myriad of issues and because she knows what the international spy community (I refuse to believe it doesn't exist!) would make of it and how it would affect Darcy. So just no.


End file.
